National Debt Clock

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The Deficit Myth: Modern Monetary Theory and the Birth of the People's Economy by Stephanie Kelton

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alan Greenspan, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, Apollo 11, Asian financial crisis, bank run, Bernie Madoff, Bernie Sanders, blockchain, bond market vigilante , book value, Bretton Woods, business cycle, capital controls, carbon tax, central bank independence, collective bargaining, COVID-19, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, David Graeber, David Ricardo: comparative advantage, decarbonisation, deindustrialization, discrete time, Donald Trump, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, floating exchange rates, Food sovereignty, full employment, gentrification, Gini coefficient, global reserve currency, global supply chain, green new deal, high-speed rail, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, inflation targeting, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), investor state dispute settlement, Isaac Newton, Jeff Bezos, liquidity trap, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, manufacturing employment, market bubble, Mason jar, Modern Monetary Theory, mortgage debt, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, new economy, New Urbanism, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, obamacare, open economy, Paul Samuelson, Phillips curve, Ponzi scheme, Post-Keynesian economics, price anchoring, price stability, pushing on a string, quantitative easing, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Richard Florida, Ronald Reagan, San Francisco homelessness, shareholder value, Silicon Valley, Tax Reform Act of 1986, trade liberalization, urban planning, working-age population, Works Progress Administration, yield curve, zero-sum game

The Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change (MCC) runs a carbon clock, counting down the days until humanity has emitted all the greenhouse gases it can afford and still stay under 2 degrees of warming.65 It’s similar to the US National Debt Clock mounted in New York City, displaying the historical record of prior deficit spending.66 But unlike the National Debt Clock, the MCC’s carbon clock is tracking a deficit that actually matters. As of this writing, and at current rates of emission, we have a little less than twenty-six years to solve our climate deficit. The Democracy Deficit You might think there couldn’t possibly be any deficit more consequential than the fate of the global climate that sustains human civilization.

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David Roberts, “What Genuine, No-Bullshit Ambition on Climate Change Would Look Like,” Vox, October 8, 2018, www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/5/7/17306008/climate-change-global-warming-scenarios-ambition. 65. MCC, “That’s How Fast the Carbon Clock Is Ticking,” Mercator Research Institute on Global Commons and Climate Change, December 2018, www.mcc-berlin.net/en/research/co2-budget.html. 66. Kimberly Amadeo, “The US National Debt Clock and Its Warning,” The Balance, February 13, 2019, www.thebalance.com/u-s-national-debt-clock-definition-and-history-3306297. 67. WEF, The Inclusive Development Index 2018: Summary and Data Highlights (Geneva, Switzerland: World Economic Forum, 2018), www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_Forum_IncGrwth_2018.pdf. 68. Quentin Fottrell, “Alone,” MarketWatch, October 10, 2018, www.marketwatch.com/story/america-has-a-big-loneliness-problem-2018-05-02. 69.

Financial Fiasco: How America's Infatuation With Homeownership and Easy Money Created the Economic Crisis by Johan Norberg

accounting loophole / creative accounting, Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Bernie Madoff, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, business cycle, capital controls, central bank independence, collateralized debt obligation, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, David Brooks, diversification, financial deregulation, financial innovation, Greenspan put, helicopter parent, Home mortgage interest deduction, housing crisis, Howard Zinn, Hyman Minsky, Isaac Newton, Joseph Schumpeter, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, Martin Wolf, Mexican peso crisis / tequila crisis, millennium bug, money market fund, moral hazard, mortgage tax deduction, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, new economy, Northern Rock, Own Your Own Home, precautionary principle, price stability, Ronald Reagan, savings glut, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail

In 1989, the real-estate tycoon Seymour Durst put a digital counter on the sidewall of a building near Times Square in New York City. It was a "national-debt clock," and Durst's aim was to highlight the fact that the U.S. national debt had attained an unbelievable $2.7 trillion and kept growing. In 2004, it was replaced with a new clock that could count backward as well. That was overly optimistic. Up was the only way the clock ever had to go, and on September 30, 2008, it reached its upper limit as the debt passed $10 trillion for the first time. That meant the display had run out of digits. A new national-debt clock will soon be put up, with room for two more digits, just to make sure.

The New Class Conflict by Joel Kotkin

2013 Report for America's Infrastructure - American Society of Civil Engineers - 19 March 2013, affirmative action, Affordable Care Act / Obamacare, Alvin Toffler, American Society of Civil Engineers: Report Card, back-to-the-city movement, Bob Noyce, Boston Dynamics, California gold rush, Californian Ideology, Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty, carbon footprint, classic study, Cornelius Vanderbilt, creative destruction, crony capitalism, David Graeber, degrowth, deindustrialization, do what you love, don't be evil, Downton Abbey, driverless car, Edward Glaeser, Elon Musk, energy security, falling living standards, future of work, Future Shock, Gini coefficient, Google bus, Herman Kahn, housing crisis, income inequality, independent contractor, informal economy, Internet of things, Jane Jacobs, Jaron Lanier, Jeff Bezos, job automation, John Markoff, John von Neumann, Joseph Schumpeter, Kevin Kelly, Kevin Roose, labor-force participation, Larry Ellison, Lewis Mumford, low interest rates, low-wage service sector, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg, Mary Meeker, mass affluent, McJob, McMansion, medical bankruptcy, microapartment, Nate Silver, National Debt Clock, New Economic Geography, new economy, New Urbanism, obamacare, offshore financial centre, Paul Buchheit, payday loans, Peter Calthorpe, plutocrats, post-industrial society, public intellectual, RAND corporation, Ray Kurzweil, rent control, rent-seeking, Report Card for America’s Infrastructure, Richard Florida, Sheryl Sandberg, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley billionaire, Silicon Valley ideology, Solyndra, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, tech worker, techlash, technoutopianism, The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Thomas L Friedman, Tony Fadell, too big to fail, transcontinental railway, trickle-down economics, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation, upwardly mobile, urban planning, urban sprawl, Virgin Galactic, War on Poverty, women in the workforce, working poor, young professional

Neil Howe, “‘Dear Graduating Class of 2012: You Are So Not Special,’” The Saeculum Decoded, June 20, 2012, http://blog.lifecourse.com/2012/06/dear-graduating-class-of-2012-you-are-so-not-special. 14. U.S. National Debt Clock, http://www.usdebtclock.org. 15. Walter Russell Mead, “Time to Occupy State Pensions?” American Interest, June 25, 2012, http://www.the-american-interest.com/wrm/2012/06/25/time-to-occupy-the-pension-funds. 16. U.S. National Debt Clock; Bruno Waterfield, “Germany to Impose Tax on the Young to Help the Old,” Telegraph (UK), April 4, 2012; Mariko Kato, “Experts Say Japan Must Change How It Is Handling Its Birthrate,” Japan Times, January 5, 2010; Yuka Hayashi, John Murphy, and Daisuke Wakabayashi, “As Factories Vanish, Japan Seeks to Fashion a New Economy,” Wall Street Journal, April 14, 2009; Yuka Hayashi, “Japan Lifts Sales Tax to Tackle Debt,” Wall Street Journal, August 11, 2012. 17.

The Post-American World: Release 2.0 by Fareed Zakaria

"World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, agricultural Revolution, airport security, Alan Greenspan, anti-communist, Asian financial crisis, battle of ideas, Bear Stearns, Berlin Wall, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, call centre, capital controls, central bank independence, centre right, collapse of Lehman Brothers, conceptual framework, Credit Default Swap, currency manipulation / currency intervention, delayed gratification, Deng Xiaoping, double entry bookkeeping, failed state, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial innovation, global reserve currency, global supply chain, Great Leap Forward, illegal immigration, interest rate derivative, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), knowledge economy, low interest rates, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Wolf, mutually assured destruction, National Debt Clock, new economy, no-fly zone, oil shock, open economy, out of africa, Parag Khanna, postindustrial economy, purchasing power parity, race to the bottom, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley startup, South China Sea, Steven Pinker, Suez crisis 1956, The future is already here, The Great Moderation, Thomas L Friedman, Thomas Malthus, three-masted sailing ship, trade route, Washington Consensus, working-age population, young professional, zero-sum game

They issued bonds to pay for pet projects, bonds that were backed by future taxes or lottery earnings. But even those politicians were put to shame by the true king of borrowers: the federal government. In 1990, the national debt stood at $3 trillion. By the end of 2008, it had climbed into the eleven-digit realm, surpassing $10 trillion. The famous National Debt Clock in New York City ran out of space to display all the figures. (Its owners plan to install a new and expanded clock.) Thanks to the extraordinary bailouts and stimulus measures of recent years, the national debt was just shy of $14 trillion at the end of 2010. The United States became a nation of debtors, in other words.

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Raja, 166 monarchy, 76, 123–24 Mondale, Walter, 251 Monier-Williams, Monier, 170 Montgomery, Bernard Law, 254 Morocco, 17, 209, 239–41, 278 Morocco bombings (2003), 17 Morris, James, 184 mortgages, 42, 46, 85, 152, 217, 222, 225 Mountbatten, Louis, 36, 164 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 74 MRI machines, 30 Mugabe, Robert, 109, 131 multiculturalism, 65 multilateralism, 246–55, 267–69 multipolar order, 1–5, 39, 52–53, 233, 241–42, 243–50, 266–69, 274 multi-spindle wheel, 72 Mumbai, 150, 173, 180, 210 Mumtaz Mahal, 70–71 Mussolini, Benito, 195 Mutual Assured Destruction, 140 Naím, Moisés, 130 Nanjing, 63 nanotechnology, 200–202, 215 Napoleon I, Emperor of France, 100 Nasser, Gamal Abdul, 84–85 National Academy of Sciences, 204 national debt, 46–49, 130, 138, 140, 217–19, 241–42 National Debt Clock, 46 nationalism, 34–42, 43, 76, 101, 134–35, 143, 145, 158–59, 180–83, 192, 274 nationalization, 197 national saving, 218 National Science Foundation, 205 nation-states, 34–42, 75 natural gas, 31, 129, 260 natural resources, 6, 30–34, 38, 65, 103–4, 115, 129–32, 232, 260 Nazism, 10, 25, 36–37, 143, 266, 275, 276 Needham, Joseph, 122–23 Nehru, Jawaharlal, 84, 86, 154, 156, 162–65, 169, 173, 177, 181 neoconservatives, 141–42, 247, 253 Netherlands, 67, 72, 79, 80, 188, 209 New Delhi, India, 150 Newsweek, 96, 227 New World, 79, 80, 187 “new world order,” 38 New York, N.Y., 48, 221, 224 New York Times, 163, 188, 203, 258 Nigeria, 60, 86, 98, 130, 149 Nixon, Richard M., 233, 284 Nobel Prize, 139, 210, 215 nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU), 217 nonalignment policy, 163–66, 177 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), 5, 34, 39, 57, 168, 173, 272 North Africa, 12–13, 20, 80 North America, 78–79 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 13, 173, 247, 268 North Korea, 6, 19, 20, 141, 175, 235–36, 246, 259, 264 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (1968), 174–78, 265 nuclear weapons, 6, 17, 29, 34, 96, 140, 142, 167, 174–78, 249, 251, 256, 259–60, 265, 273, 275 Nunn, Sam, 265 Nye, Joseph, 121 Obama, Barack, xii, 139, 178, 251, 256, 259, 266, 279 Odah, Salman al-, 14–15 Oglethorpe University, 276 oil, 6, 30–32, 38, 115, 232–33, 260 Olympic Games, 5, 103, 105, 137, 187 Omdurman, Battle of, 188 one-child policy, 148, 214n O’Neill, Thomas P.

Retirementology: Rethinking the American Dream in a New Economy by Gregory Brandon Salsbury

Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, asset allocation, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, buy and hold, carried interest, Cass Sunstein, credit crunch, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, diversification, estate planning, financial independence, fixed income, full employment, hindsight bias, housing crisis, loss aversion, market bubble, market clearing, mass affluent, Maui Hawaii, mental accounting, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, National Debt Clock, negative equity, new economy, RFID, Richard Thaler, risk tolerance, Robert Shiller, side project, Silicon Valley, Steve Jobs, the rule of 72, Yogi Berra

Endnotes 1 Hopkins, Jerry, Anthony Bourdain, and Michael Freeman, Extreme Cuisine: The Weird & Wonderful Foods That People Eat, 2009. 2 Gold Bulletin, “Gold leaf tops $1,000 sushi roll,” April 17, 2008. 3 Cooking Resources, “Cooking With Edible Metals Like Gold, Silver,” October 29, 2009. 4 Gold Bulletin, “Gold leaf tops $1,000 sushi roll,” April 17, 2008. 5 Business Week, “After the Housing Boom,” April 11, 2005. 6 Credit Card News, “Ditching credit cards right move for some,” September 22, 2008. 7 NPR, “Credit Card Companies Raise Minimum Payments,” November 4, 2005. 8 The New York Times, “Economy Fitful, Americans Start to Pay As They Go,” February 5, 2008. 9 The New York Times, “Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt,” July 20, 2008. 10 The New York Times, “Given a Shovel, Americans Dig Deeper Into Debt,” July 20, 2008. 11 USA Today, “Obama team makes it official: Budget deficit hits record. By a lot,” October 16, 2009. 12 The American, “Debt Be Not Proud: The Sorry Tale of America’s Out-of-Control Spending,” September 7, 2009. 13 Brillig, U.S. National Debt Clock, as of January 14, 2010. 14 Market Watch, “Financial fears grow,” March 20, 2009. 15 Market Watch, “Financial fears grow,” March 20, 2009. 16 Market Watch, “Financial fears grow,” March 20, 2009. 17 Yahoo! Finance, Starbucks Corp. (SBUX): Historical Prices, Jan. 1, 2007–Dec. 31, 2007. 18 Navellier Growth, “As Starbucks (SBUX) Stumbles, Green Mountain Coffee Roasters (GMCR) Shines,” April 16, 2009. 19 Broadcast Engineering, “Big-screen LCD TV sales grow in 2007, research firm says,” February 19, 2008. 20 Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation, Boating & Fishing Facts, 2006 Recreational Boating Statistical Abstract, 2007. 21 The New York Times, “Hummer’s Decline Puts Dealers at Risk,” March 31, 2009. 22 The New York Times, “MTV’s ‘Super Sweet 16’ Gives a Sour Pleasure,” April 26, 2006. 23 iStock Analyst, “Retail Survey Report: Cache Stores, Chili’s, Chuck E.

Extreme Money: Masters of the Universe and the Cult of Risk by Satyajit Das

"RICO laws" OR "Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations", "there is no alternative" (TINA), "World Economic Forum" Davos, affirmative action, Alan Greenspan, Albert Einstein, algorithmic trading, Andy Kessler, AOL-Time Warner, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Basel III, Bear Stearns, behavioural economics, Benoit Mandelbrot, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Big bang: deregulation of the City of London, Black Swan, Bonfire of the Vanities, bonus culture, book value, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, capital asset pricing model, carbon credits, Carl Icahn, Carmen Reinhart, carried interest, Celtic Tiger, clean water, cognitive dissonance, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, corporate governance, corporate raider, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency risk, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deal flow, debt deflation, Deng Xiaoping, deskilling, discrete time, diversification, diversified portfolio, Doomsday Clock, Dr. Strangelove, Dutch auction, Edward Thorp, Emanuel Derman, en.wikipedia.org, Eugene Fama: efficient market hypothesis, eurozone crisis, Everybody Ought to Be Rich, Fall of the Berlin Wall, financial engineering, financial independence, financial innovation, financial thriller, fixed income, foreign exchange controls, full employment, Glass-Steagall Act, global reserve currency, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Goodhart's law, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Greenspan put, happiness index / gross national happiness, haute cuisine, Herman Kahn, high net worth, Hyman Minsky, index fund, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, invention of the wheel, invisible hand, Isaac Newton, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", job automation, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, John Bogle, John Meriwether, joint-stock company, Jones Act, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, Kevin Kelly, laissez-faire capitalism, load shedding, locking in a profit, Long Term Capital Management, Louis Bachelier, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, market fundamentalism, Market Wizards by Jack D. Schwager, Marshall McLuhan, Martin Wolf, mega-rich, merger arbitrage, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Milgram experiment, military-industrial complex, Minsky moment, money market fund, Mont Pelerin Society, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, mutually assured destruction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, negative equity, NetJets, Network effects, new economy, Nick Leeson, Nixon shock, Northern Rock, nuclear winter, oil shock, Own Your Own Home, Paul Samuelson, pets.com, Philip Mirowski, Phillips curve, planned obsolescence, plutocrats, Ponzi scheme, price anchoring, price stability, profit maximization, proprietary trading, public intellectual, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, Ralph Nader, RAND corporation, random walk, Ray Kurzweil, regulatory arbitrage, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Feynman, Richard Thaler, Right to Buy, risk free rate, risk-adjusted returns, risk/return, road to serfdom, Robert Shiller, Rod Stewart played at Stephen Schwarzman birthday party, rolodex, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Satyajit Das, savings glut, shareholder value, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, Silicon Valley, six sigma, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, special economic zone, statistical model, Stephen Hawking, Steve Jobs, stock buybacks, survivorship bias, tail risk, Teledyne, The Chicago School, The Great Moderation, the market place, the medium is the message, The Myth of the Rational Market, The Nature of the Firm, the new new thing, The Predators' Ball, The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, Thorstein Veblen, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, Turing test, two and twenty, Upton Sinclair, value at risk, Yogi Berra, zero-coupon bond, zero-sum game

In 1947 the directors of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists at the University of Chicago created the doomsday clock. The minutes to midnight represent the time remaining to catastrophic destruction (midnight) of the human race from global nuclear war. In 1989 Seymour Darst, a New York real estate developer, created the financial equivalent. He installed the national debt clock—a billboard-size digital display on Sixth Avenue (Avenue of the Americas) in Manhattan, New York, that constantly updates to show the current U.S. public debt and each American family’s share of it. When this clock was originally erected, the U.S. national debt was under $3 trillion. The clock was switched off from 2000 to 2002 when the national debt briefly fell.

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., 183, 328 MSNBC, 93 Mullins, David, 144, 248 multistrategy, 243 Mumbai Stock Exchange, 91 Münchau, Wolfgang, 351 Mundell, Robert, 170 municipal bonds, 211-214 TOBs (tender option bonds), 222 Murakami, Takashi, 324 Murder on the Orient Express, 302 Murdoch, Rupert, 149, 164, 322 Museum of Modern Art, 324 mutually assured destruction (MAD), 38 My Broker: A Monk Tycoon Reveals the 7 Laws of Spiritual Growth, 98 N Nader, Ralph, 326 Narvik, Norway, 221 National Australia Bank (NAB), 228 National City Bank, 342 national debt clock, 34 National Economic Council, 215 National Health Service, 47 National Homeownership Strategy, 181 National Public Radio (NPR), 185 natural gas, 251 negative amortization, 182 Nemesis, 366 nest eggs, 27 net risk, 240 networks, 270 vulnerability of, 272-273 Neues Deutschland, 260 Neutron Jack.

The Half-Life of Facts: Why Everything We Know Has an Expiration Date by Samuel Arbesman

Albert Einstein, Alfred Russel Wallace, Amazon Mechanical Turk, Andrew Wiles, Apollo 11, bioinformatics, British Empire, Cesare Marchetti: Marchetti’s constant, Charles Babbage, Chelsea Manning, Clayton Christensen, cognitive bias, cognitive dissonance, conceptual framework, data science, David Brooks, demographic transition, double entry bookkeeping, double helix, Galaxy Zoo, Gregor Mendel, guest worker program, Gödel, Escher, Bach, Ignaz Semmelweis: hand washing, index fund, invention of movable type, Isaac Newton, John Harrison: Longitude, Kevin Kelly, language acquisition, Large Hadron Collider, life extension, Marc Andreessen, meta-analysis, Milgram experiment, National Debt Clock, Nicholas Carr, P = NP, p-value, Paul Erdős, Pluto: dwarf planet, power law, publication bias, randomized controlled trial, Richard Feynman, Rodney Brooks, scientific worldview, SimCity, social contagion, social graph, social web, systematic bias, text mining, the long tail, the scientific method, the strength of weak ties, Thomas Kuhn: the structure of scientific revolutions, Thomas Malthus, Tyler Cowen, Tyler Cowen: Great Stagnation

How each of us implements these rather difficult solutions is certainly a personal choice, but the following are a number of suggestions. For example, there is a Web site called Worldometers. It is part of the Real Time Statistics Project and acts as a clearinghouse for the sorts of estimated real-time counters we have likely seen, such as the National Debt Clock near Times Square in New York City, which counts the U.S. debt. Worldometers aggregates counters from numerous organizations for such quantities as the current world population and the number of member countries in the United Nations, new books published this year, HIV/AIDS–infected individuals, the amount of coal left on Earth, and the number of species that have gone extinct this year.

Fed Up!: Success, Excess and Crisis Through the Eyes of a Hedge Fund Macro Trader by Colin Lancaster

"World Economic Forum" Davos, Adam Neumann (WeWork), Airbnb, Alan Greenspan, always be closing, asset-backed security, beat the dealer, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Bernie Sanders, Big Tech, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, bond market vigilante , Bonfire of the Vanities, Boris Johnson, Bretton Woods, business cycle, buy the rumour, sell the news, Carmen Reinhart, Chuck Templeton: OpenTable:, collateralized debt obligation, coronavirus, COVID-19, creative destruction, credit crunch, currency manipulation / currency intervention, deal flow, Donald Trump, Edward Thorp, family office, fear index, fiat currency, fixed income, Flash crash, George Floyd, global macro, global pandemic, global supply chain, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Gordon Gekko, greed is good, Growth in a Time of Debt, housing crisis, index arbitrage, inverted yield curve, Jeff Bezos, Jim Simons, junk bonds, Kenneth Rogoff, liquidity trap, lockdown, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, low skilled workers, margin call, market bubble, Masayoshi Son, Michael Milken, Mikhail Gorbachev, Minsky moment, Modern Monetary Theory, moral hazard, National Debt Clock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Northern Rock, oil shock, pets.com, Ponzi scheme, price stability, proprietary trading, quantitative easing, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator, reserve currency, Ronald Reagan, Ronald Reagan: Tear down this wall, Sharpe ratio, short selling, short squeeze, social distancing, SoftBank, statistical arbitrage, stock buybacks, The Great Moderation, TikTok, too big to fail, trickle-down economics, two and twenty, value at risk, Vision Fund, WeWork, yield curve, zero-sum game

Yeah, they’re more likely to be one of those “deaths of despair” that my friend in Paris is looking for. I bet that big mean one will be a miserable son of a bitch when he turns forty, dreams shattered. The daily grind will pulverize the little decency he had in him. More tequila and the national debt clock flashes through my mind like a bad PnL day. Our debt is up huge since I was in Vegas. It’ll probably be heading to $29 or $30 trillion by the end of the year. I wonder if they still have the clock ticking or whether they turned it off when they shut down the Strip. Day drinking soon becomes night drinking, and it’s now taking a toll.

The Dollar Meltdown: Surviving the Coming Currency Crisis With Gold, Oil, and Other Unconventional Investments by Charles Goyette

Alan Greenspan, bank run, banking crisis, Bear Stearns, Ben Bernanke: helicopter money, Berlin Wall, Bernie Madoff, Bretton Woods, British Empire, Buckminster Fuller, business cycle, buy and hold, California gold rush, currency manipulation / currency intervention, Deng Xiaoping, diversified portfolio, Elliott wave, fiat currency, fixed income, Fractional reserve banking, housing crisis, If something cannot go on forever, it will stop - Herbert Stein's Law, index fund, junk bonds, Lao Tzu, low interest rates, margin call, market bubble, McMansion, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, National Debt Clock, oil shock, peak oil, pushing on a string, reserve currency, rising living standards, road to serfdom, Ronald Reagan, Saturday Night Live, short selling, Silicon Valley, transaction costs

It proved to be the largest annual deficit in history. The $455 billion shortfall represented a 280 percent increase over the year before. A 12.5 percent jump in Pentagon spending, to $595 billion, and $18.2 billion to cover FDIC-insured deposits contributed to the deficit. Meanwhile, the counter on the National Debt Clock whirled past $10 trillion. The famous thirteen-digit clock installed in Times Square in 1989 couldn’t properly accommodate the higher numbers when the national debt broke into fourteen-digit territory on September 30. The clock operators, apparently expecting more of the same kind of reckless government we’ve been getting, plan to install a fifteen-digit clock.

I'm a stranger here myself: notes on returning to America after twenty years away by Bill Bryson

flying shuttle, illegal immigration, millennium bug, National Debt Clock, Ronald Reagan, Simon Kuznets, telemarketer

First, they have usually had quite a lot to drink at lunch, and, second, such numbers really are confusing. And that is the whole problem. Big numbers are simply beyond what we are capable of grasping. On Sixth Avenue in New York there is an electronic billboard, erected and paid for by some anonymous source, that announces itself as “The National Debt Clock.” When I was last there, it listed the national debt at $4,533,603,804,000—that’s $4.5 trillion—and the figure was growing by $10,000 every second, or so fast that the last three digits on the electronic meter were a blur. But what does $4.5 trillion actually mean? Well, let’s just try to grasp the concept of $1 trillion.

The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World by Niall Ferguson

Admiral Zheng, Alan Greenspan, An Inconvenient Truth, Andrei Shleifer, Asian financial crisis, asset allocation, asset-backed security, Atahualpa, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, Bear Stearns, Black Monday: stock market crash in 1987, Black Swan, Black-Scholes formula, Bonfire of the Vanities, Bretton Woods, BRICs, British Empire, business cycle, capital asset pricing model, capital controls, Carmen Reinhart, Cass Sunstein, central bank independence, classic study, collateralized debt obligation, colonial exploitation, commoditize, Corn Laws, corporate governance, creative destruction, credit crunch, Credit Default Swap, credit default swaps / collateralized debt obligations, currency manipulation / currency intervention, currency peg, Daniel Kahneman / Amos Tversky, deglobalization, diversification, diversified portfolio, double entry bookkeeping, Edmond Halley, Edward Glaeser, Edward Lloyd's coffeehouse, equity risk premium, financial engineering, financial innovation, financial intermediation, fixed income, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, Francisco Pizarro, full employment, Future Shock, German hyperinflation, Greenspan put, Herman Kahn, Hernando de Soto, high net worth, hindsight bias, Home mortgage interest deduction, Hyman Minsky, income inequality, information asymmetry, interest rate swap, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Isaac Newton, iterative process, James Carville said: "I would like to be reincarnated as the bond market. You can intimidate everybody.", John Meriwether, joint-stock company, joint-stock limited liability company, Joseph Schumpeter, junk bonds, Kenneth Arrow, Kenneth Rogoff, knowledge economy, labour mobility, Landlord’s Game, liberal capitalism, London Interbank Offered Rate, Long Term Capital Management, low interest rates, market bubble, market fundamentalism, means of production, Mikhail Gorbachev, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, moral hazard, mortgage debt, mortgage tax deduction, Myron Scholes, Naomi Klein, National Debt Clock, negative equity, Nelson Mandela, Nick Bostrom, Nick Leeson, Northern Rock, Parag Khanna, pension reform, price anchoring, price stability, principal–agent problem, probability theory / Blaise Pascal / Pierre de Fermat, profit motive, quantitative hedge fund, RAND corporation, random walk, rent control, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, Robert Shiller, rolling blackouts, Ronald Reagan, Savings and loan crisis, savings glut, seigniorage, short selling, Silicon Valley, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, spice trade, stocks for the long run, structural adjustment programs, subprime mortgage crisis, tail risk, technology bubble, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, The Wisdom of Crowds, Thomas Bayes, Thomas Malthus, Thorstein Veblen, tontine, too big to fail, transaction costs, two and twenty, undersea cable, value at risk, W. E. B. Du Bois, Washington Consensus, Yom Kippur War

That does not mean, however, that the bond market rules the world in the sense that James Carville meant. Indeed, the kind of discipline he associated with the bond market in the 1990s has been conspicuous by its absence under President Clinton’s successor, George W. Bush. Just months before President Bush’s election, on 7 September 2000, the National Debt Clock in New York’s Times Square was shut down. On that day it read as follows: ‘Our national debt: $5,676,989,904,887. Your family share: $73,733.’ After three years of budget surpluses, both candidates for the presidency were talking as if paying off the national debt was a viable project. According to CNN Democratic presidential nominee Al Gore has outlined a plan that he says would eliminate the debt by 2012.

The Social Life of Money by Nigel Dodd

"hyperreality Baudrillard"~20 OR "Baudrillard hyperreality", accounting loophole / creative accounting, bank run, banking crisis, banks create money, behavioural economics, Bernie Madoff, bitcoin, Bitcoin Ponzi scheme, blockchain, borderless world, Bretton Woods, BRICs, business cycle, capital controls, capitalist realism, cashless society, central bank independence, collapse of Lehman Brothers, collateralized debt obligation, commoditize, computer age, conceptual framework, credit crunch, cross-subsidies, currency risk, David Graeber, debt deflation, dematerialisation, disintermediation, Dogecoin, emotional labour, eurozone crisis, fiat currency, financial engineering, financial exclusion, financial innovation, Financial Instability Hypothesis, financial repression, floating exchange rates, Fractional reserve banking, gentrification, German hyperinflation, Goldman Sachs: Vampire Squid, Herbert Marcuse, Hyman Minsky, illegal immigration, informal economy, interest rate swap, Isaac Newton, John Maynard Keynes: Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, joint-stock company, Joseph Schumpeter, Kickstarter, Kula ring, laissez-faire capitalism, land reform, late capitalism, liberal capitalism, liquidity trap, litecoin, London Interbank Offered Rate, M-Pesa, Marshall McLuhan, means of production, mental accounting, microcredit, Minsky moment, mobile money, Modern Monetary Theory, Money creation, money market fund, money: store of value / unit of account / medium of exchange, mortgage debt, National Debt Clock, Neal Stephenson, negative equity, new economy, Nixon shock, Nixon triggered the end of the Bretton Woods system, Occupy movement, offshore financial centre, paradox of thrift, payday loans, Peace of Westphalia, peer-to-peer, peer-to-peer lending, Ponzi scheme, post scarcity, post-Fordism, Post-Keynesian economics, postnationalism / post nation state, predatory finance, price mechanism, price stability, quantitative easing, quantitative trading / quantitative finance, remote working, rent-seeking, reserve currency, Richard Thaler, risk free rate, Robert Shiller, Satoshi Nakamoto, scientific management, Scientific racism, seigniorage, Skype, Slavoj Žižek, South Sea Bubble, sovereign wealth fund, special drawing rights, The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, too big to fail, trade liberalization, transaction costs, Veblen good, Wave and Pay, Westphalian system, WikiLeaks, Wolfgang Streeck, yield curve, zero-coupon bond

Just as capital’s acceleration exonerates money of all previous involvements with production, so the mutation of money into a cancerous state severs all connections with a universe in which debts can be cleared. This situation—recall Walter Benjamin here—is a universal bankruptcy, binding us all together “just as accomplices are tied by their crime” (Baudrillard 1997: 39). It is a common destiny served on credit. Baudrillard frames it using the national debt clock on 42nd Street in New York. The total on the debt clock rises inexorably; indeed, it ran out of digits in 2008 when the U.S. national debt exceeded $10 trillion for the first time. It is a curious inversion of Benjamin’s logic because for Baudrillard, the notion that it could ever be repaid is mocked, not reinforced, by the passing of time.